The Punt: McCue cashes in at Powers

For most of us, losing our job can be a traumatic event. No matter what we may say, nobody likes to be told they're no longer wanted by their employer, and losing our jobs can have serious and immediate ramifications for our living arrangements.

For most of us, losing our job can be a traumatic event. No matter what we may say, nobody likes to be told they're no longer wanted by their employer, and losing our jobs can have serious and immediate ramifications for our living arrangements.

For Andy McCue though, who is out of a job barely 18 months after taking over as the chief executive of Paddy Power, The Punt feels things might be okay.

According to the annual report of Paddy Power Betfair, which was published yesterday, Mr McCue earned €3.7m last year - his only full year as chief executive of the bookie before it merged with Betfair.

That was an increase of over €1m from 2014 when his total remuneration was a mere €2.6m. In fairness, Mr McCue was only chief operating officer then so it was natural for him to get a significant bump when he moved to the top job.

He didn't last long in the top job however. After the merger with Betfair he was shunted down to COO, with Betfair chief Breon Corcoran in charge of the enlarged group. Now Mr McCue has left that job as well, and will leave the company's board at the end of this month.

As for Mr Corcoran, the Mullingar native is on a base salary of £700,000 (€882,000) this year but he will hardly be in the poor house with that wage. If he hits his targets in his 2016 long term incentive plan, he can look forward to a bonus of up to 300pc of his salary.

Fahy's Shannon goes unlimited

Perhaps Frank Fahy (63) has decided he's had enough of prying eyes.

Filings for the main company within his Shannon construction group, Shannon Homes Dublin, show that it has just been changed to an unlimited business. That means that it will no longer have to file publicly available accounts with the Company Registration Office.

The change became effective earlier this month.

Shannon Homes was one of the few big building companies to avoid being sucked into the Nama vortex. It maintains a strong balance sheet. The most recent publicly available accounts, for the 12 months to March 2015, show that it had €158.4m in shareholder funds at the end of that month. That was about €4m higher than the previous year.

Included in its current assets was €46.8m in cash, which was down from the €58.5m it had to hand at the end of March 2014. Its property-related assets were valued at €44.4m last year, but the company noted that due to the state of the market it was still difficult to establish meaningful valuations.

The Fastway to success

A business established in New Zealand has zoomed into top place as Ireland's Courier Company of the Year.

The annual awards took place at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Dublin and was attended by 500 industry professionals.

The accolade is a first for Fastway Couriers and marks a major milestone for the business, which has now grown its presence since establishing itself in Ireland in 2002 into a national brand, providing a pre-paid, next-day parcel collection and delivery service to over 20,000 businesses throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Bobby O'Keeffe, Fastway chief executive, said it was a massive achievement for the company.

Fastway Couriers achieved business growth of over 20pc last year and is now benefiting directly from the rapid rise of online shopping. It counts many of the leading online e-commerce businesses such as ASOS, Littlewoods Ireland, Zara, Oxendales, Boohoo.com, MissGuided and Amazon among its customers.

Fastway, which was first established in New Zealand in 1983, is a franchise organisation operating three international sorting hubs in Portarlington, Dublin and Antrim.